1948,
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
It's one of the best, certainly. Walter Huston is not acting, he is being.
2001,
Who is Cletis Tout?
Not only was it surprisingly amusing, but Tim Allen's character is constantly throwing out lines from old movies. How many can you recognize?
1988,
Mississipi Burning
This movie is about the FBI's desperate attempts to solve a triple murder, perpetrated by Klansmen, who also happened to be the authorities. The case is broken after the FBI kidnap the Mayor of the town, place him in a shack, and threaten to slice off body parts. In the movie, the interogator was only ever known as a "specialist." In real life, the man who did this was actually a mobster hitman from the NYC area. Who OK'ed that? The mayor killed himself, even though he wasn't even a Klansman, nor in on the murder, according to the movie. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Hoover's FBI had the Mayor killed, so he wouldn't ever talk about his interrogation.
1939,
Ninotchka
Greta Garbo has some amazing lines, playing a patriotic Soviet. However, at the end, her three compatriots start crowing about how great the West is. They lied. They said we can say anything we want, "no one cares!". I guess they don't know that the government, for any reason, including political views, does monitor, invade, and generally make paranoid all of its ideological differers.
1947,
Ride the Pink Horse
Movies can be lots of different things. One usually thinks of Orson Welles and
film noir. Robert Montgomery is not a typical hero. It's important to see if you want to better understand the full range of movies. The angles are simply very different.
